The widely publicized, heavily subsidized “One Nation” rally was Saturday in Washington, D.C. As has been openly admitted by the organizers, which included the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and Obama’s perpetual campaign organization Organizing for America, this rally was held in the same place and at basically the same time of the day as Glenn Beck’s 8/28 “Restoring Honor” rally, specifically to demonstrate the depth of support for the president’s program. The convention organizers had a number of advantages, perhaps the greatest being that the buses bringing in demonstrators were apparently subsidized by the rally organizers.

Some of the initial reports were very positive: the organizers estimated 175,000 to 200,000 attendees, according to Crooks and Liars‘ report of “preliminary satellite estimates … at about noon EST [sic].”

(Where do they get these satellite estimates? PJM has been completely unsuccessful finding satellite companies that can give us these sorts of pictures on demand; there isn’t a satellite passing over Washington, D.C., any time you want one.)

Naturally, we were interested in the topic. Following various crowd estimates has become a running topic of interest at Pajamas Media, starting with my original crowd estimates that began with a “back of the envelope” calculation in a comment at Vodkapundit, followed by a more formal calculation here in PJM (“March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd?“).

Since then, I’ve built up a fairly well described methodology: we use Google Earth to estimate the area of the crowd from whatever photographs are available, then multiple by several different constants depending on the crowd density. These estimates are taken from published Park Service standards going back at least to the Obama inaugural.

Since the “One Nation” rally was consciously positioned at exactly the same place as the “Restoring Honor” rally, we can compare with my original baseline very easily.

Here’s the crowd perimeter as I drew it with Google Earth:

That area was about 2.4 million square meters. Using the crowd density estimates, we finally arrived at these estimates for the Beck crowd:

The assumptions there correspond to the Park Service’s standard for a “dense crowd” of about 5 square feet per person, my estimate of the crowd densities observed in the photos (10 square feet per person), and estimates from people in the most densely packed parts of the crowd (2.5 square feet per person).

All things considered, I think the best estimate, finally, is that Beck attracted somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 people.

Compare and contrast as necessary — as the lawyers say: “the thing speaks for itself.”

It’s difficult to place the edges of the crowd from these photographs, simply because the crowd in that one overhead photo is so far down the picture. However, the grassy area around the Lincoln Memorial is roughly one tenth the area in the full map above. That means the “One Nation” crowd would have been roughly 22,000 to 85,000 people at most.

There is video at the link. It is a lie by the way. There is no Satellite image. It would be on the wires if it existed, especially if it showed what the speaker claimed that this rally was bigger than Beck's.

The engineering eye would conclude from the pictures that commie rally had about 10% of the Beck's rally.

There were statements that if the pool was filled with people, that would be 250,000. Looking at Becks rally, that is at least 3 times area filled with people and I would estimate somewhere between 800,000 to 1,000,000.

Notice also that RAT rally allowed buses to park next to the area, while Becks space was filled with porta toilets.

Thank you for these photos, especially the bottom tier one that prove that these guys are even stupider than I thought. Yesterday I posted to a different thread (#49) that I thought that these harangued and coerced attendees would be less than enthusiastic in cleaning up after themselves. Where I was wrong was that I thought that the organizers would make every effort to clean up quickly, having the previous conservative rallies reputation in mind. Now you show that they couldn't even do that much, what a bunch of leeches!

Unions said that about 2.9 million had marched, while police said the crowds numbered 899,000. The union figure was about the same as at the last demonstrations on September 23. The police figure was slightly lower.

One question. Is this the first wave? Will they all be there for the Jon Stewart rally plus whatever the comedian and Obama can draw? Maybe they think it will be a one two knockout punch. I wouldnt be surprised by such a devious followup plan right before the election.

As I recall the best shot from Glenns rally was taken from the top of the Washington Monument. For some reason I havent seen one taken from that same vantage point. Cant imagine why. /s

You would expect that SOMEBODY, whether Fox News, Breitbart, some some private individual would have gone up there and taken pics, and they would have appeared on the web by now. Was there access to the Washington Monument during the rally?

42
posted on 10/03/2010 9:38:46 AM PDT
by PapaBear3625
("It is only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything" -- Fight Club)

Well, the liberals were all set to have a p***ing contest about the crowd sizes of Beck vs. this joint liberal group rally.

If the liberal groups had gotten a bigger crowd, that would have been a big part of the story. It would have been played up as showing that more support the liberal/radical groups than support Beck and conservatives, etc.

But since the liberals can’t win that p***ing contest, they have decided that the crowd size doesn’t matter after all.

I can’t wait for the Jon Stewart rally on Oct. 30th. More liberal stuff to hear. Though in Jon Stewart’s case, it will be a liberal comedian making fun of conservatives.

Jon Stewart’s rally may well backfire as much as Stephen Colbert testifiying to Congress backfired. Comedians have their time and place, but there’s no way Jon Stewart can expect to be taken seriously as a serious commentator. Yet that’s exactly what he wants to do.

That’s pretty much what I was thinking: these people are so blinded by ideology that they can’t see the results of their ideas. The repeated failures of leftism is only because “THEY” weren’t the ones in charge...

It’s sad, and frightening at the same time.

48
posted on 10/03/2010 10:06:38 AM PDT
by Don W
(I keep some folks' numbers in my 'phone just so I know NOT to answer when they call...)

Thanks for this posting! Interesting and the crowd comparison photos are excellent! A lot goes into estimating crowds, but nothing says it all like an over-head photo! ( As long as the photos were taken at approximately the same time of day. )

49
posted on 10/03/2010 10:07:25 AM PDT
by Republic
(The entire White House presidential team needs to grow up and face facts!)

The March Was Scheduled to Begin at 11:30 AM. People Started Showing Up At 8:00 AM Until After 1:00 PM. The Camera Was Turned Off at Exactly 11:30 AM. Hundreds of Thousands More Were Gridlocked On Freeways and Trapped By Traffic

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